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Thursday, March 9, 1911: I have cold, and a sore nose, but my nose was worse than my cold. I just had to keep rubbing at it all day. It is a beautiful pink now. I didn’t feel very good today. Well who would with a sore nose and a blistered hand.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma’s just having a bad week. See yesterday’s post for more details about Grandma’s blistered hand.

A hundred years ago there a basic understanding that germs caused colds—but the focus was on keeping resistance high so that the germs wouldn’t take root and cause the cold.

CATARRH, COLD IN THE HEAD

Cause—There are many causes of catarrh; sudden change of temperature, too light clothing, sitting in a draught, chilly atmosphere, or anything that will cause a cold in the head. Exposure to cold lowers the resistance of the body to infection, and, what is more interesting still, it has been proved that in regard to various diseases which are known to be caused by micro-organisms, and especially in regard to pneumonia, we may carry the organisms about with us and not suffer, and yet that exposure to cold may at once enable the microbes to take root.

Hello

I look forward to sharing my grandmother's diary with relatives and friends. Helena Muffly (Swartz) kept a diary from 1911-1914. She was 15 years old when she began this diary. I plan to post these entries one day at a time—exactly 100 years after she wrote them. I hope you enjoy this glimpse back to a slower paced time.

The header is a picture of the farm where my grandmother lived when she wrote this diary. It is located in Northumberland County in central Pennsyvlania about a mile outside of McEwenvsille. My father said that the buildings look similar to what they looked like when he was a child.